


Lower

by degradedpsychotic



Series: Stuck in the Middle [1]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Donation fic, Mental Hospital AU, Multi, Self Harm, Suicide, Triggers, dovetail
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-15
Updated: 2016-03-27
Packaged: 2018-03-23 03:38:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3753106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/degradedpsychotic/pseuds/degradedpsychotic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>[ DOVETAIL DONATION FIC FOR HIGHER ]</p><p>My mom had cancer for a majority of my childhood. In fact, the moment I stepped through the door of twenty-something adulthood, she was gone. This isn't a story about me coming to terms with that. No, this is just a story about trying to get by, because winning isn't everything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Winning Isn't Everything (Prologue)

**Author's Note:**

> And here it is! $5 to get it going, and considering that I have a new job without computer access and I'm a busy busy bee, it's going to be $15 per chapter. I got one donation for $10 (Thank you so _so_ much!) so that puts $5 towards chapter two.
> 
> My Patreon is located [here!](https://www.patreon.com/degradedpsychotic)
> 
> And as always, many thanks to Skire, especially for being an emotional guinea pig as I tried to pack this with as many tears as possible.

Hospital waiting rooms aren’t made to be comfortable. The pale, undecorated walls, no clocks, and a small fish tank gurgling while you were forced to either stare at the receptionist behind the glass as they play Solitaire or flip through last month’s edition of _People_ or _Time_. The chairs were uncomfortable, cheap, made just to house someone for an hour or less. They threatened to flip if you sat too close to the end, and the armrests felt more like guards to keep you from lying down on them and relaxing like you wanted to.

For a seven year old, hospital waiting rooms were torture.

I was a small kid, and I remember that in those hospital waiting room chairs, if I sat with my back flush to the rear of the thing, my feet could dangle and I could kick them wildly. I would find amusement in the slapping of my neon laces, the sting of the aglets occasionally flicking at my ankles. Sometimes I would knock my heels together and watch the _poof_ of a little cloud of residual dust, or the wild spray of water from puddles or melted snow.

My father would tell me to calm down whenever I started to kick so much that my chair tottered, to go run and get snacks with Mina if I was so energetic. But I never took him up on those offers. No, I stayed right in those chairs for hours, even curling up and sleeping in them when I could manage a comfortable position. Mina did the same, and our quiet, childish conversations about the different fish in the tank were all that broke the heavy silence.

We had named all of the fish—The neon tetras, the snails stuck to the glass, and all the others that we were too young to pronounce or even know the names of. It kept us busy, weaving wild stories about waiting room fish and their lives before being confined into a tank, but even we couldn’t ignore the elephant in the room for long. The one thing that even childish imagination couldn’t chase away.

We couldn’t ignore when the doctor would come out and my father would stand, the two of them sharing very hushed words. Dad would always get this weird look on his face, like he was relieved, but the stress lines and the bags under his eyes seemed to get bigger. He would tell us to wait and he would go into the big swinging doors with the doctor, and we would wait in total silence. Sometimes, Mina would cry.

We were only six and seven, but we knew what was happening.

Sometimes, mom would come out with her arm wrapped around dad’s, or she’d be in a wheelchair. Those were the good days, when she was allowed to leave the sterile prison. The days when me and Mina would rush towards her and hug her and say how much we had missed her and she would laugh and ruffle our hair and kiss our foreheads and _smile_.

My mother always smiled.

That day, though, when I was seven and Mina was six, our mother didn’t come out with our dad. Instead, he gave us a weak smile and we were escorted through maze-like hallways until we found her room. Our mother was lying in the hospital bed, all sorts of beeping monitors going off, and an IV in her vein. She could barely open her eyes, and even underneath the mask giving her air, she had just enough strength to smile.

My father stood, one hand idly playing with the ends of her bushy brown hair as if he was scared of touching her skin. The single plastic chair had been moved beside her bed and both me and Mina had somehow squeezed onto it, spilling over onto the edge of the bed as cold, trembling fingers cupped our faces and tucked our shaggy hair behind our ears.

That was the first day I had caught my father crying.

Emergencies like those didn’t happen often. She had only been in the hospital for one day or less, but that time, she had been there for nearly a week. Me and Mina had stayed at my aunt’s house in Rose so we could be closer, so we could visit whenever we wanted. And after that week, we returned to Jinae and a small town doctor and she was okay.

But doctors and adults lie.

For a few years, we thought mom was okay. I joined a soccer league through my school and Mina took up softball. Sometimes our games would conflict and dad would come to soccer while mom went to softball or vice-versa. I remember one game, when I was eight, that was the same night as one of Mina’s softball matches. Dad had gone to Mina’s, and mom was going to be at mine. I remember bouncing on my heels while we stood around for our pre-game cheer. A bunch of pint-sized kids screaming while our coach reminded us that _winning isn’t everything._

Winning isn’t everything.

I turned around, and my mom’s usual spot on the bleachers was empty.

At first, I figured maybe she had gotten stuck in traffic. Dad had been late sometimes, so maybe she would be there in a few minutes. So I ran around on the field with my eyes (my little doe eyes, as she affectionately called them) always darting to check the bleachers. I didn’t see her, but I saw my coach having a hushed discussion with the assistant coach and a couple of worried looking parents. They didn’t even notice when I tripped over my own feet and fell on my butt and _stayed there_.

I stayed there until the whistle blew and the coach broke away from his conversation to run over to me, pressing against points in my legs and asking if I was okay. “Are you hurt? What happened?”

I just sniffed.

He frowned and helped me up, a hand on my thin shoulder as he guided me back to the sidelines. One of the worried mothers handed me a juice box and a bag of pretzels and rubbed circles in my back. The coach stood beside me, his eyes on the field as the mothers and assistant coach checked me over and rifled through first aid kits to heal invisible wounds.

“Did you get hurt, sweetie?”

I sat with crossed legs on the grass, poking my little plastic straw through the foil of my juice box. “No,” I said softly, balancing the box on my knee as I handed back the pretzels. “I’ll go back out when mom gets here…”

I’ll never forget the looks on their faces when I said that.

It was one of the mothers—Mrs. Barnes, if I remember –that took action. She sat down on the grass next to me, an unopened box of bandaids on her tracksuit lap as she ducked her head to get into my line of view. “Sweetie, your dad called earlier… Your mom’s in the hospital.”

Mrs. Barnes drove me in her little minivan to the small, local Jinae clinic. My father was pacing outside, lighting up as soon as he saw me. He thanked Mrs. Barnes profusely, his hands shaking on my shoulders as he tried to put his strong face back on. I saw Mina in the doorway and immediately ran for her, letting her grab my hand and tug me into the depths of the old creaking clinic while dad kept chatting with Mrs. Barnes about adult things that I was too naive to know about.

Mom was sitting in one of those stiff chairs that they use when you get shots or bloodwork, a nurse crouching between her knees and speaking softly to her. My mother was in normal clothes—A loose t-shirt and sweats. Her thin hair was pulled back in a loose ponytail at the base of her skull and she looked so _tired_. The nurse handed her a styrofoam cup with a lid and a straw on it before gently patting the back of her hand and standing. She poked around a big stand beside my mother’s chair, and I made eye contact with my mom’s own big doe eyes long enough to see the wetness of tears before she forced a smile.

There was a needle in her arm and a bucket by her feet.

Dad came in and gently ushered us away with the excuse that mom needed room. She just gave us that same paper-thin smile and a little wave as the nurse came back and we were steered into the doctor’s office.

He was an old man, balding and face dotted with liver spots. But he was kind—The doctor I had grown up with. The doctor that helped mom and that had given me a flu vaccination last year. He wore big, round wire-framed glasses that set high on his rounded nose, reflecting florescent lighting on the thick lenses. There were a scattering of papers before him, his spindly hands gesturing for us to sit in the gathered chairs that had been dragged in from the waiting room. We sat, and my feet no longer missed the floor, but barely scuffed it. I stared resoundly at my lap at my deep blue soccer shorts.

“Your father and I both believe you’re old enough to hear this news,” he started slowly, drawing both mine and Mina’s head up to look at him properly. I felt dad’s hand on my back, watched the way the doctor struggled for his next words. “I understand that you’re already aware that your mother is ill with a thing called cancer.”

I hated that word. I hated it so, _so_ much.

“There are different kinds of cancers,” he began, and I felt the hand of my father leave me because it was trembling too much. I didn’t turn to look at him. “The type your mother has is breast cancer. It’s overgrowth in the breast tissue, which can be dangerous for her. But she’s being a very good patient—She’s beaten it once before, before the two of you were even born, and I have faith that she’ll beat it again.”

Winning isn’t everything.

After that, we learned that our mother was on chemo, and we watched her make monthly trips to the clinic as her hair thinned and fell out. It clogged the drains, but we cleaned them without bringing it up. Mina and I pooled our allowance to buy her this really fancy, floppy straw hat for mother's day. She cried when we gave it to her, but she wasn’t ashamed of her baldness. She took it in stride, even if she was left without enough energy to get to the bed some days.

But mom still made us lunches, still came to our sports games. She never missed another soccer game. She even made cookies for the team when she came back after her emergency chemo appointment. We had a lot of family meetings whenever mom’s health dipped, but the doctor had been right. She was strong, she kept smiling, and she was okay. Bald, pale, and weak, but _okay_.

Our dog died when I was ten. That was my first exposure to death, and I knew that it was a feeling I would have to get used to, because _okay_ didn’t last long.

She invested in her first wig when I was eleven, and Mina became her hair stylist.

When I was twelve, her right breast was removed. Three months later, we all went out to Applebee’s because her check-up at the clinic (followed by a just-in-case visit to St. Maria’s cancer ward) had announced her cancer free. She had won. She was _okay_.

Winning isn’t everything.

My sophomore year of high school came around, and the days of mom bustling in the kitchen and playing with me and Mina in the backyard with a worn soccer ball were gone. My dad stopped laughing, my mom stopped driving us to school while she sang along with oldies rock.

I remember my sixteenth birthday with sharp distinction. I remember the weather that day—Sunny, but snow still clinging to patches of grass in the shade. I was bundled in a hoodie and a ski cap, constantly checking the clock on my tacky little flip phone and going through my mental schedule. It was nine forty-two when dad came back from his food run, and I should have been in geometry with Mr. Pratt. He sat down beside me and Mina stirred against my shoulder as I took the offered cup of coffee from my father’s pale hands, mumbling a thanks and not wanting to look up into his tired face. Mina was sound asleep, her hands tightening around the arm she had in her grasp on reflex. She was frowning. I tried to focus on my coffee that said HAPPY BIRTHDAY! in Sharpie on it in my father’s writing. Words too happy to say in a place like this.

I spent my sixteenth birthday in the waiting room of St. Maria’s cancer ward.

My mother had been taken to by ambulance on the previous night, and while my father had insisted that me and my sister stay home for the night so we could go to school in the morning, I ended up driving the both of us (I still had my learner’s permit, but no one was on the road at three in the morning to pull me over anyway) to the hospital. My dad hadn’t even had the energy to argue. He just sat us down in the cushy plastic chairs beside the obligatory fish tank that the waiting room had integrated into its wall.

He sat us down and told us that mom’s cancer had come back.

It wasn’t breast cancer this time. It had cropped up somewhere else—Her liver. That was enough of a shock for us. Mom didn’t drink, didn’t smoke, and she ate so healthy that we sometimes joked that she was a rabbit. But we also knew that cancer wasn’t that picky, and once someone _had_ cancer, there’s always the possibility that it can pop up somewhere else. Anywhere else.

My world had gone a little numb after the official announcement, and Mina had wept so hard that she had fallen asleep against my shoulder at six. Now it was nine, Mina was still asleep, and I was sipping cold Tim Horton’s coffee while my dad expertly split a massive sandwich for us to share.

And mom was still behind those double doors that said AUTHORIZED PERSONELL ONLY.

She didn’t come out until fourteen minutes after eleven, and she was in a wheelchair. She had received chemo again. My dad talked in hush whispers to the doctor that had pushed her out in her chair, but she easily rolled herself over to where I and a newly awakened Mina were sitting. I stood immediately, already prepared to do whatever it was she needed me to, but she swatted at my thigh.

“I’m alright, honey. Sorry for making the both of you worry such a fuss about me. Just be a dear and tell the doctor that I don’t need this thing—I don’t think it’s going to fit through the front door anyway! Honestly, I’m alright!”

She wasn’t _alright_. She was pale, gaunt, fresh off of her treatment, _sick again_.

We had wheeled her out to the family truck after she had signed her release papers and my dad had discussed payment. My own car was too small to fit the wheelchair that Mina and my dad were trying to figure out how to fold while I helped my mother into the passenger seat. She smiled at me once she settled, a hand reaching up to smooth the worry lines in my forehead.

“I’ll be alright, Marco,” she said softly, her thin fingers pushing my bangs back under the band of my hat. “I’ve already beat this twice. And liver cancer?” She grinned, tapping the pad of her finger on my nose. “Piece of cake. I gotta lay off the chocolate, though. That might be a problem.”

It was amazing how dying, _sick_ people could be so happy.

Dad drove mom home to help her get settled, giving me and Mina the options of going back to school or going to the store to find something for dinner. Considering it was just gone noon and school let out at three, we agreed to skip with my learner’s permit in order to go to the Meijer just down the road. We didn’t have much money, but with a combined twenty-two dollars and eighty-four cents, we could get _something_.

“Do you think mom’s gonna be hungry?” was the first thing that Mina said, leaning against the cart as I browsed the deli case.

I frowned, chewing on my cheek for a minute. If she was back on chemo, I knew the likely answer to that. But there was some stubborn part of me that didn’t want to accept that the last three years of cancer-free life had come to a crashing halt.

Mina sighed behind me and nudged the cart forward. “Let’s just get a pizza.”

Pizza. The food dad always got us when mom was too sick. When Reiner couldn’t make time to come over to cook for us. When I was too emotionally tired to pick up a skillet for eggs.

“No,” I mumbled, snatching a ticket from the deli counter as we waited. “They have ham on sale.”

“Marco…”

I swallowed, telling the clerk my order with a lump in my throat. We didn’t speak again until we got home.

We made ham and cheese sandwiches for dinner. Mom didn’t eat. She was sleeping on the hide-a-bed in the living room with the space by her ankles empty where a dog used to be. After we ate, dad left to go lay with her, the news channel on the lowest possible volume so it didn’t wake her. Mina went upstairs under the guise of catching up on homework, but I could see the tears forming when she went.

My phone rang as I was staring blankly at the dishes, and I answered it robotically.

“Hey! Why weren’t you at school today? I was carrying around a box of birthday cupcakes like an idiot all day. Are you home?”

My breath caught in my throat, and I could hear my parents speaking lowly in the next room. I had almost forgot it was my birthday, since the cup from Tim Hortons. “Oh, uh…”

But Reiner was smart. He knew me enough to pick up on the hitches and tones in my voice. “What happened?” he asked, immediately serious. “Do you want me to come over?”

I felt the lump back in my throat, turning my back to the soaking dishes and sinking down, spine pressed to the cabinets. The tv was turned up, and I knew that they were giving me privacy. But I still hiccupped, choked around the words. Maybe it was just a nightmare. Maybe it wasn’t real.

“M-mom… has cancer. It came back.” There was silence on the other end long enough for me to cough around the sound of a sob. When it still hadn’t filled, I spoke again. “It’s in her liver… It was weak from all of her medication. She woke up at, like, three this morning with really bad pain… God, she was _screaming_ , Reiner… They-they put her back on chemo. _She’s_ _sick again_.”

He was silent. He knew that the words were building up like a waterfall in my chest, and I couldn’t hide the sobs with coughs anymore so I stumbled out the side door and into our backyard.

“Why is she sick again?! Three years! Three years and she was okay! And now it’s in her _liver_! They can’t just cut it out like they did when she had breast cancer, Reiner! She doesn’t deserve this! Why can’t she be healthy?!” I heaved with sobbing breaths, collapsing on the steps of our back porch, my phone stuck to my cheek with tears as I dropped my head between my knees. “They s-said they can’t operate… It’s too risky, the way it’s grown, and…” I hiccupped, fisting my hair as I fought for _something_ to hold onto. I couldn’t submit back to this. I couldn’t watch my sunflower of a mother wither in the dark with an IV drip. “Medication and chemo… That’s all we can do. A-and if it doesn’t work…”

“It’ll work.”

I took a shuddering breath, flinching at the feedback from my speaker. “B-but—“

“It will. Your mom’s tough as nails, Marco. Now can I come over and give you these cupcakes or what?”

I said yes.

I cried on Reiner’s shoulder and hid the cupcakes in the cupboards because it was my birthday, but it wasn’t what was important right now. Mom was sick. That was all I cared about. That was all I mourned over. Reiner, thank God, understood that.

We stayed in Jinae. Mina and I had high school to attend to, and while we still missed some days here and there due to mom needing to be rushed to Rose for treatment at St. Maria’s, we kept our grades up. Sure, they weren't As anymore, but Bs and C pluses were still passing.

With every month that passed, our mother grew weaker. She couldn’t walk on her own, needing a wheelchair or my father to carry her. She taught me how to cook, since my dad was a disaster in the kitchen and Mina seemed to have picked up the knack for burning water from him. Some days, mom couldn’t even eat, but she would still sit at the kitchen table and engage in conversation. And if she was too tired to speak, she would just smile and watch us. I dropped out of soccer and joined the marching band with Reiner so I wouldn’t have to travel for games anymore. I played in the drumline, and while I wasn’t that good at keeping rhythm, mom still wanted me to play for her. So I did, in time with her fluttering heartbeat.

When I was nineteen, my dad called me and Mina into the kitchen for a “family meeting”. Mom was asleep on the pull-out couch, her fits in the night too startling for her to sleep in bed with my father.

That was the first time “death” was ever spoken in our house. We had been ignoring it, that giant shadow looming over the woman who gave us so much life. But death was synonymous with cancer, and my mother was suffering too much to carry on for much longer. He told us through watery eyes to start mentally preparing for it, that our mother would be ceasing her chemo treatments in the winter. She wanted to be around for Christmas, was her reason. We cried a lot that day, but we also showed our love. We spent the day all laid out on mom’s hide-a-bed watching TV and listening to her recount stories with my dad. She told embarrassing baby stories about me and Mina, teased us for the little high school crushes we had had in the past, and smiled around the pain.

Once I had graduated high school, I had been taking courses in the community college. I immediately dropped them for the sole excuse of staying with mom, lying with her and watching dumb soap operas or watching her knit with trembling hands as she tried to teach me. I wasn’t very good at it, but Mina had picked it up, and even though she was pale and bald and sickly as the cancer moved from her liver to her heart and threatened to cut her lifeline at any moment, my mother still cracked jokes that I would still make a better wife because at least _I_ knew how to cook. Even Reiner came over to visit, almost everyday, and my mom _adored_ him and Bertholdt. But we didn’t have anyone else over. We didn’t want her to feel like we were already arranging her funeral.

Someone that happy had no right to be taken away.

But winning isn’t everything. Sometimes you lose.

Off of chemo, she lasted. She didn’t thrive, no, but she lasted. There were more hospital visits, more calling 911 in the middle of the night or driving her to the local clinic. She lost her appetite completely, losing so much weight that even her extra-small clothes went baggy. She was a small woman to begin with, but in those final moments, she looked like no more than a bag of bones. She had to be on oxygen, an IV, and we had to give her medicine three times a day. It was so sad, so pitiful, that she was simply lying in that limbo of life and death.

But she still smiled.

She still smiled and said how proud she was when I made a dish properly, or Mina finished her first scarf that wasn't five degrees of crooked. She still smiled as we all ate our meals in the living room so we could be together. She smiled when I unfolded her wheelchair and took her out to the back porch for some sun.

It was such a nice day. A little chilly with early-autumn air, but the sun was hot. Nice.

“Marco?” Her voice cracked, dry from chapped lips. The floppy hat me and Mina had bought for her so long ago cast a shadow on my knees. I hummed in response on the stair in front of her, her wheelchair parked as she ran her hands through my hair. “Are you going to go back to school?”

I knew the real question without her finishing it. _Will you continue with your life when I’m gone?_ I sighed, picking at the seams on my jeans. “I dunno. I’m not sure what I should major in…”

She mocked my sigh, but it was ruined by the _click_ of her nasal cannula. “I think you’d be a good teacher, if you want my input.”

I arched a brow at the oak trees that were already losing leaves. “Mina’s going to be a teacher.”

“So? You’re good with kids, you’re compassionate, and you can explain to me how to use an iPad-thing, so you’re perfect for it.”

I snorted at her, leaning my head back to press against her knees. “I dunno. I might…”

Her hands began to massage at my scalp with as much strength as they could and I closed my eyes to the feeling. “I would offer up culinary as a second choice, but you’re not _that_ good at cooking yet.”

I pouted, warmth flooding me as I heard her laugh softly. But the moment didn’t last.

“I just want you to be able to move on once I’m gone, baby… You need to live your own life, not sit here and wait for mine to run out.”

My voice was thick with emotion when I answered, causing a kiss to my forehead as I spilled it out. “I’ll go to college… for you, mom. I’ll be a teacher o-or something… I promise.”

“I just want you to be happy. You need to try to be happy when I’m gone.”

The thing about moms is that they’re always right.

That was her last good day.

Those last weeks, those last days, we spent at the hospital. The nurse came to alert us that the cancer was dangerously close to her heart, and me, Mina, and my father flooded the room. Mina was crying and she asked mom why she had to die, why this had happened.

She smiled and said, “Because God picks the brightest of his garden.”

And then she died an hour later, in the middle of a medicated nap. Marcy Eleanor Bodt died at six forty-three in the morning of November first. I was twenty-two years old.

The funeral was on the fifth.

It was sad. Really, really sad. Funerals are, but I’ve never cried that hard in my life. My eyes went dry halfway through, and all I could do was hold Mina while she sobbed into my shoulder and dad read his eulogy. I had to let her go when it was my turn, but she came up to join me, one hand clinging to mine and the other resting on the polished wood of our mother’s casket. The closest we would ever get to touching her.

The piece of paper her eulogy was on was all kinds of crumpled. I had scribbled bits and pieces out and added stuff in, but I hadn’t typed it up _neatly_ like my father had suggested. My eyes were clouded with tears as I smoothed the paper on the podium with one hand, Mina squeezing the hand she held captive in support.

“I-I’m Marco Lawrence Bodt, and this is Mina Carolina Bodt… W-we were named after our grandparents—Our mom’s parents, Lawrence and Carolina. The Ms are a Bodt thing.” That got tense laughter, but I wasn’t up here to crack jokes. I was up here to respect the most important woman in my life. “Marcy is… _was_ our mom. She… was honestly the kindest person I ever knew. I know it’s cliché to say that she smiled ‘til the very end, but it’s true. She… She never wanted us to be sad. She wanted us to be _happy_ , no matter what. She always put others before herself. S-she…” The lines blurred, my throat closed, and Mina squeezed my hand again as she took over. A sob choked from my throat and I hid my face in my hand, not wanting to see the peacefully sleeping face of my mother in her casket.

“She loved us,” Mina croaked, trembling against me. “She t-told us that God had given her everyth-thing she wanted… That we were the perfect kids, even if we g-got into trouble… She praised us and cheered us on for everything we did, and I like to think th-that we’re all the better for it… She made us who we are today. She was strong. She was our _mother_. The strongest woman w-we knew, and ever _will know_. We loved her— _love_ her. She was strong. She was so, so strong. And w—“ She choked on her own sob, leaning heavily against me as she finished, her voice tight and strained. “We’re so proud to be her children.”

The pastor had to help us back to our seats before we collapsed.

They always say that cancer and their families patients are strong. “Oh, they were so strong during all of that!” Yeah, well if they were strong, why didn’t they beat it? They call cancer a battle, but it’s really one-sided and nothing that… heroic. Cancer just ate away and destroyed cells and livelihood while the “strong” patient just tried to hide their tears from their family and pray that there might be a cure. John Green could fucking romanticize it as much as he wanted, but I had seen what cancer did firsthand.

I had learned that winning isn’t everything.

I had seen her sitting in a plastic chair with a vomit bucket on the floor, an IV dripping chemo into her veins while my father held her white-knuckled hand. I had seen her lying in bed at home, too weak to get up to even roll over or speak. I had seen my mother arching off of the floor, face white and eyes wide, lungs not working right. I had seen her loaded into the back of an ambulance, and I had seen my worry and fear reflected in the eyes of my younger sister and my prematurely graying father.

We buried her in the small cemetery behind Jinae’s most prominent church, where she had gone every Sunday before she had become sick. The same church that donated so much of their money to unpaid bills and funeral expenses. The funeral party was large enough to nearly flood the whole area, made up of church goers, my mother’s friends, and our extended family. My widowed grandmother had kneeled next to the grave and was crying harder than all of us, because you were never supposed to outlive your own children, even if they were in-laws. We said a group prayer over the newly turned dirt and left a garden of flowers on the mound. All yellow, white, and bright varieties of pink.

Mina, my father, and I remained long after the funeral party left, finding the beaming sun to be oddly fitting for my mother’s funeral.

My father pressed a kiss upon the headstone and we quietly returned to a house that seemed far too empty without her presence.

We moved out within a week. We had to sell the house for money.

Mina went back to school full-time, moving onto campus in the girls’ dorms. Dad moved in with my grandmother in Rose. I think he just needed the company of his mother right then, just like I needed. He offered me to move in too, but Reiner brought up a vacancy of an apartment right next door to him, so I moved there. Dad helped me pay my initial rent, Reiner helped me move all my stuff, and I lasted approximately two days before something broke.

Something had broken inside of me that left me sitting on the same hide-a-bed that had served as my mother’s death bed. The TV was on the evening news, spouting the latest celebrity gossip that I didn’t care about. My thoughts had reduced to white noise, the sound from the TV coming through cotton shoved in my ears. My fingers and toes were cold and numb, toes curled in the carpet and my fingers just… limp. Doing that half-curled thing that fingers do when you just let them _sit there_.

My phone buzzed for the umpteenth time on the cushion next to me, but I still didn’t look at it. If it was important, they could call. Leave a voicemail. Whatever.

Maybe it was a couple minutes, a couple seconds, or an hour later that the door opened. The news had switched to the weather report, spots of blue and white peppering the radar with snow. I hadn’t even registered the turn of a key in the lock before the door had opened and a familiar, booming voice rang out.

“Marco?”

My eyes moved to find Reiner stepping out of his shoes, cradling a foil-covered pot under his arm. He frowned at me when I forced a smile that didn’t even reach my cheeks, inviting himself in as he slipped into the kitchen and began rummaging around for dishes.

“I’ve seen that poor Pizza Hut guy over here for the past two nights. Thought I might save you from the pizza curse,” he called out to me, the sound of clinking silverware announcing that he was setting the table. “It’s that chicken noodle casserole stuff you like.”

I didn’t move from the couch.

Reiner continued to move in the kitchen before I heard silence from him, but I didn’t turn to look. The white noise had spread from my skull and into the hollow of my chest, festering at the wounds that hadn’t healed since November first at six forty-three in the morning. I hadn’t cried anymore—No, the funeral had rung me dry. I had simply been drifting, sleeping for obscene hours and eating pizza. I had promised mom that I would move on with my life, but as far as I had gotten was opening up the Jinae Community College web page before I shut my laptop, shoved it under my bed, and went back to staring at blank white walls and boxes of things that still remained packed up.

Reiner flopped down on the couch beside me with a plate of steaming chicken, noodles, and whatever vegetables he had felt like adding. Forks were buried under the not-quite-soup as he handed one of the plates over to me. “Eat up, Marco. You look half starved.”

I knew I didn’t. It had only been a little over a week. I hadn’t dropped that much weight in that short of time… right? But I took the plate anyway, pushing around the noodles on my plate with the fork. I could feel him frowning at me as I did nothing but stir the food around in disinterest, eventually dropping the warm plate onto my lap. He had grabbed the remote and shut off the TV, and I knew that he wanted to _talk_.

“Eat, Marco.”

“Not hungry.”

His fork scraped against his plate with a sound that made my bones vibrate, and I flinched. “Marco.”

I chewed on my cheek, spearing a slice of carrot and a chunk of chicken. “Where’s Bert?” I could divert the conversation. Guide it back to something less… intrusive.

His plate clinked as he sat it on the makeshift coffee table, his fingers hesitating over the bills I had there, unopened. “He’s… getting help.”

It was my turn to frown, turning my head enough to see him. My neck creaked with how long had been staring straight forward, and I ignored the little _pop_ it let out. “Help…?”

“You know how his anxiety’s been bad lately…?”

I gave a little nod, dragging the carrot and chicken through the gravy and noodles on my plate. Bert’s anxiety had been deteriorating ever since he had _tried_ college last year. The stress had proved too much and he dropped out before midterms, and he had developed a small case of agoraphobia as of late. He wouldn’t leave the house unless Reiner or myself was with him, so to learn he had gone somewhere on his own… “Where did he go?”

He paused, thinking over his words before he rested his hands on his knees, rubbing at them in a nervous tick. He seemed like he was trying to think over the words, not sure how to phrase whatever it was he had to say. “Y’know, Saint Maria’s has a mental ward.”

My jaw clenched.

“Don’t gimme that look—But _please_ , Marco. It’s not that big of a deal. It’s just like staying overnight at a hospital—“

“I’ve spent enough time at St. Maria’s, Reiner.”

His face twisted in a scowl, his patience with me beginning to crumble. He had been on me since the funeral to seek some kind of professional assistance or treatment. Therapists, grief counselors, and now a mental hospital that Bertholdt had apparently been taken into? No offence to Bert, of course, but I didn’t think my condition was as bad as his.

Of course, I couldn’t look at myself from Reiner’s point of view. I kind of wondered what that looked like, to make him so… _determined_.

“I knew you for those three years that your mom was healthy, Marco. I also knew you when she got sick. You were _never_ this bad. You look like hell.”

“I’m fine,” I murmured, picking my fork to my mouth and nibbling at the food there. I only managed a few pieces of the chicken chunk before I put it down again. “It’s mourning. I’ll get through it.” At least, that was what Mina had told me. That was what dad said. “I’ll be okay.”

Reiner sighed, sliding down until his elbows were on his knees and his hands were clasped. “Just promise me you’ll get help, Marco… I’m not a professional therapist. I can only help so much.”

“And I can’t afford a shrink,” I cut across, placing my plate down beside his as I stood, joints cracking and creaking as I did. “Thanks for the food.” It was nothing more than a dismissal. I appreciated his attempts at cheering me up, yes, but the constant nagging of going to a therapist… It was grating. I had meant it when I said I couldn’t afford it—My whole family was pitching in just to pay mom’s medical bills and funeral costs, on top of my rent because I had, for some reason, thought that moving out on my own was a good idea.

Part of me just wanted to be alone in my grief.

The other was screaming when Reiner slipped his shoes back on and left.

After he left, I stuck the leftovers of the meal into the fridge and stalked upstairs to take a shower, locking the front door on my way. I closed the bathroom door on reflex, but the sudden crush of claustrophobia and the walls closing in on me and the white noise was so _loud_ and I couldn’t breathe—

Pills. Pain pills. Advil worked for headaches, so maybe it would work for the sudden, abrupt onset of burning pain in my chest. Shit, maybe it was a heart attack. I didn’t have any Bayer Aspirin though, but wasn’t Advil just like a weaker option? So I dumped the pill bottle up, emptying it of its contents. Ten, fifteen pills, maybe. My sight was swimming in tears already as I shoved the pills in my mouth like M&Ms and stuck my head under the faucet. The aftertaste was _disgusting_ , but I stripped down and stood in the shower to wash away what panic and grief I could.

I don’t remember getting out of the shower.

But I do remember telling a nurse in white scrubs that was drawing a blood sample that part of me had wished I was dead.

And I guess that’s how I ended up in the back of an ambulance, huddling in on myself while the medic talked to me in a too-soft voice for a man so large. His deep blue paramedic uniform was awkwardly stretched around his pudgy body. Though maybe _pudgy_ wasn’t the right word for a guy that had to nearly bend double when he stood inside of an ambulance.

“So why’d you do it?”

I shrugged, looking squarely at my socks. My shoes were still at my house, my neon socks horribly dirty. I had been rushed to the ER when Reiner found me on the couch in nothing but socks and backwards boxers, or so I had been told. He said he had come back to apologize, but found me for three delirious minutes before I passed out completely. Reiner had been right there with me in the ER when the nurse asked if I wanted to go to a mental hospital and he nodded. He said I needed it. I needed help with the grief.

 _“Bert’s gonna be there. You can both get the help you need._ Please _, Marco.”_

I probably should have listened to him earlier.

“My mom died,” I croaked, clammy fingers playing with the hem of my shirt. I was basically in my pajamas, sweat pants and a flannel over a t-shirt. Nothing special. It was two in the morning though, so I doubt it mattered. I had lost count of the hours somewhere between consciousness and the teasing brush of death and candy that tasted like Advil.

The big man nodded, reclining back on the bench opposite of me. He had offered me the gurney to sleep on, but I just chose the uncomfortable bench that was made a mess with all sorts of equipment. Equipment that was now piled on the gurney, sliding and bouncing as the driver kept her eyes firmly on the road. “You wanted to see her again?”

My throat closed up, so I just nodded, watching the image of my feet begin to blur. It wasn’t the full truth, of course. I hadn’t even known that the pills would have killed me, but when the doctor told me I was lucky to be alive, I had broken down into sobs on Reiner’s shoulder, slurring nonsense about how I just wanted to die and make the pain stop.

“I guess I can relate to that. When my own ma died, I was a wreck. But, hey, Saint Maria’s can help you out. They’re really good at what they do. They’ll teach you ways to cope, or other ways you can relive being with your mom.” He smiled, making dimples on his reddened face. I watched the shine on his balding head from the overhead lighting, slick black hair still left at the sides and the back. He didn’t seem _that_ old—Maybe early forties, at the most. But being an EMT was probably a stressful job. Maybe he had ripped the hair out from the grief. I wondered how many people had died in this ambulance. I wondered how often he had nightmares. I wondered if he worked the night shift just because he couldn’t sleep.

I wondered if he was scared.

But I was scared, too. I didn’t know what a psych ward was like, or even if they could really help me as much as Reiner said. Not to mention that Mina and my dad had no idea I was in this ambulance right now, on my way to the mental ward of the hospital my mother had spent her final moments in.

“You know, you can cry if you want. It’s not like I’m gonna judge you. There’s some tissues up on that rack above ya if you need ‘em.”

So I cried. Just like that. Some switch had ignited inside of me and everything hit me at once. The funeral, the pills, Reiner’s face, the nurse, the doctor, the look Reiner gave me as I climbed into the ambulance… I cried until I had flooded the cracks in my broken world, until I had made mountains with tissues. I was still teary-eyed with a sore throat when the ambulance stopped and the man stood, opening the side door for me.

“Here we are, kiddo. Want me to walk you in?”

“Please,” I croaked, sounding as if I was the one dying on a hide-a-bed in the living room.

He just smiled, opened the door, and I stepped back within the all-too-familiar walls of Saint Maria’s Medical Center.


	2. First is the Worst

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can all thank Jordan for their _very_ generous donation of $20!  
>  I would also like to apologize that Higher hasn't updated much. A lot has been going on in my personal life, and I'm actually in the transition of moving in with my mom right now. BUT, considering I feel incredibly bad for letting you guys hang for so long, the rollover $10 from Jordan's donation and the previous donation will be going towards the next chapter of Higher instead of this one because, frankly, Lower is a lot more emotionally taxing for me because I've been through those First Days and being put in at 3 in the morning and... _yeah_. But don't expect it soon- like I said, I'm in the middle of a move and things are pretty hectic.
> 
> Anyway, some obvious warnings for how fucking depressed Marco is in this chapter, but we all know he'll get better.  
> Read on!

The only place within St. Maria's that I had ever been was the cancer ward.

But when I stepped out of that ambulance, I was faced with the equivalent of a loading dock; a yellowed light that flickered in the cold night shone on a heavy metal door fit with a call box and shoddy concrete pathways that the EMT warned me to watch out for.

Let's just say it wasn't very welcoming.

He poked one of his sausage fingers at the call box and a few moments later, a tinny woman's voice answered.

“Yes?”

The EMT must have noticed how badly I was shaking, because one of his hands rested on my shoulder.

“Got a drop off. Jinae Medical should have called?”

“Yeah. Come on in.”

A loud  _ click  _ shook the door, the EMT opening the heavy door and silently ushering me in.

It was a small waiting area with only two chairs and a small table with a tissue box, branching into two hallways and interrupted by a receptionist behind bulletproof glass.

The EMT approached the receptionist and exchanged a few words while I fiddled with the strings on my pajama pants and wondered if Reiner had done the honors of calling Mina and my dad for me. I wondered how long I would even be here…

One of the doors clicked and beeped before it opened, a nurse in pale blue scrubs standing there with a clipboard and a thick stack of papers. She didn’t smile, didn’t say a word, but when I looked to the EMT, he only put a hand on my back and guided me towards her and her tight-tied bun.

“You’ll be alright, Marco.”

My whole body was shaking with the anxiety of being in a new place with a woman that looked like her lips were permanently pressed together in a scowl, and I  _ missed _ the EMT as soon as he left and I was led down a bright, sterile white hall to a room with a male nurse that was poking at his phone before tucking it under his thigh to hide it.

“Marco Bodt?” he asked.

I nodded.

The tight-lipped woman closed the door, and my intake process began.

It was, and still is, the most dehumanizing thing I had ever been through.

The male nurse (his name tag said Jake) quizzed me with a sheet of paper on health history and if I wanted to kill myself with the pen he was writing with while the woman (her name tag was at her hip, and it said Nancy) took my blood pressure and pulse and temperature and a vial of blood.

Once Jake had talked me through a good ten pages of questions and my bottom lip was shaking with fear and emotion, Nancy stepped out and I was given the order to strip.

I was given a papery pair of sterile underwear and Jake shoved my clothes into a paper bag. He picked up a different clipboard, and the quizzing continued.

He asked me about every bruise or old scar on my body. Every cut (I only had one, and it was from cutting myself with a boxcutter trying to open the box that held my clothes when I moved) was questioned, I was told to raise my arms while he looked  _ closer _ …

And then I was granted a backless hospital gown. Jake wrapped a hospital band onto my wrist that was a little too tight, clipping off the excess plastic as he began to speak without looking at me.

“We need to wash your clothes before you’re permitted to wear them, and we have to remove any strings, laces, or ties,” he recited, looking  _ bored _ as he stuffed the filled out papers into a folder. “You'll see a psychiatrist tomorrow morning. Nancy will take you to your ward.”

And that was it. 

I followed Nancy in cheap fuzzy socks that Jake had let me wear, shivering and so  _ cold _ in a flimsy hospital gown. We wove through so many hallways that I couldn’t remember where we were or if we were going in circles… But finally we came to a larger area, a desk that broke off into four halls in a T shape, parting around the desk.

A man sat at the desk, looking more than a little peeved, as he took my folder from Nancy. My eyes were watering too badly to read his nametag as he tucked the folder away and Nancy left without a word.

“You’re in room six,” the man instructed me stiffly, searching behind the desk before he handed me a crinkling pillow and a starchy, thin blanket. “You’re sharing with Thomas. We’ll wake you in the morning.”

I just stood there, body trembling so hard that it was a miracle I was still standing.

The man sighed. “To your left, third door on the--”

“ _ No! _ I came in here willingly, so why won’t they let me fucking  _ go?!  _ This is bullshit!”

My eyes widened at the shrill screams, but the man looked as if this was normal. He picked up a bottle of pills with a red cap and headed off to the right side hallway as the screams rose in pitch.

“ _ Fuck _ this place! I’d rather drown in the fucking  _ toilet _ than spend another day here!”

I found room six with blurring eyes and hands shaking so bad that I nearly dropped the pillow and blanket several times.

The room was dark, the only light coming in through the doorless entry from the hall. There were two beds, one near the window and one near the entry, and there was a lump on the one by the window that I assumed must be Thomas.

I put my pillow and blanket on a plastic bed before I laid down, my skin sticking with anxious, fearful sweat. I tried to ignore it as the screams turned wordless and then  _ silent _ , and I heard low voices discussing something I couldn’t quite hear.

I bit my lip, closed my eyes, and cried, hands clinging to my starchy blanket.

I was cold, I was scared, and I had never felt so  _ alone _ .

It felt like an eternity that must have been more like ten minutes when I heard the other bed squeak, opening my eyes wide and fearful as I saw the other boy sit up, the hall light illuminating a pale face and light blond hair, eyes squinted against the brightness.

“...Hey. You crying?”

I was good at muffling sobs. Not so good at hiding the hyperventilating.

Thomas swung his legs over to rest his feet on the floor, and I was instantly envious of his long-sleeved t-shirt and sweatpants  _ and _ his socks. My body gave a particularly  _ hard _ shiver of cold in jealousy.

“It’s okay. First day’s rough… especially if you come in at three in the morning.” His lips pulled into a smile, warm and welcoming, but I didn’t feel any better. “Just try to sleep. It’ll be better in the morning. Oh, and I'm Thomas, by the way.”

When I still didn’t respond, Thomas seemed to give up, giving me a soft “well, g’night” before he yawned and tucked himself back under his scratchy blanket, plastic squeaking at the movement.

I didn’t sleep.

As the reality of my situation sunk in more, I grew even  _ more _ panicked. My sobs turned into hyperventilating, and I know somewhere in there I whimpered about wanting to go home. About being  _ scared _ . That I missed my mom.

But I was still sane enough to realize that I probably wasn’t helping Thomas sleep, so I got up and paced around the sterile halls. The grumpy-looking man behind the counter gave me a curious look, but wordlessly handed me a box of tissues as I found a room with a TV on and watched late night reruns and infomercials.

I found myself pacing several times more. I would calm down enough to return to bed, but then the emotions return tenfold under that blanket and I would go back to the TV room.

Somewhere between four and five o’clock, I heard the creak of the door and looked over to see Bertholdt limping in.

He smiled weakly at me, setting down a paper bag beside me.

“...The nurse said your clothes are done. They’re still warm from the dryer.”

I just hiccuped around a pathetic sob.

Bertholdt told me that the closet door in the room I shared with Thomas was actually a bathroom, so I quickly went to change into  _ warm _ clothes and actual underwear that didn’t crinkle when I walked. I grabbed up the scratchy blanket from my bed and shuffled back to the TV room in my socks, curling back into the stiff armchair I was in before. Bertholdt was sitting on a sagging couch, smiling softly at me.

“I know it’s scary. I still… don’t really talk to anyone here. But it’s not all bad. They’ll give you some medicine to help, and Krista is really nice…”

“...I just wanna go home,” was the only answer I had for that, picking at a loose thread on the blanket. “I know I need help, but... “ I hiccuped again, and Bertholdt made a small noise of sympathy. I looked up at him, to find him playing with his own hospital band.

“You were really bad, Marco,” he whispered, as if he was afraid of me hearing the concern in his voice. “Me and Reiner couldn’t even get through to you… I miss your mom too, but…” He bit his lip, looking at me from under his lashes with caution. “She wouldn’t want you trying to kill yourself.”

I tucked myself tighter, pulling my knees to my chest and holding them beneath the blanket. I buried my face into the scratchy material, screwing my eyes shut tight as I fought past another rising lump of tears in the back of my throat.

I knew that.

I knew that my mother only ever wanted me to be happy. I knew that she smiled so often that she hoped we would catch it like an infection. I knew that she was able to find beauty and grace in her death, but I was still stuck looking at the gravestone in the sunlight with freshly-dug dirt, knowing she was six feet below me instead of inches above me.

That was the thing about my mom. Her presence had just been so big, so  _ warm _ , throughout my entire life. She was a homemaker and a  _ sun _ , warming with smiles and freckled cheeks and doe eyes that never held a trace of sadness. I knew that she must have cried. She must have been so  _ scared _ . 

They say cancer patients are fighters. My mom  _ was _ a fighter, but she wasn’t a champion. She fought because she loved us. She stayed on treatments through Christmas because she didn’t want us to miss a holiday with her. She sat at the table in a wheelchair with an IV even when she couldn’t eat because she wanted to spend a meal with us.

She was so very,  _ very _ selfless.

But Bertholdt was right. The EMT was right. Reiner was right.

My mother wouldn’t have wanted me to be sad.

My grandmother had held my hands in hers at the funeral when I couldn’t see for the tears, her old hands so small in mine but so  _ big _ . She had softly told me that I shouldn’t be sad. Mom was in heaven, and she wasn’t sick anymore, and she wasn’t suffering anymore. That she was with God and I shouldn’t be sad because she isn’t  _ gone _ . I just couldn’t see her.

But it still hurt.

It will always,  _ always _ hurt.

Bertholdt sat with me until the clock neared six, quietly instructing me that I should at least  _ try _ to get some sleep. I watched him limp and shuffle back to his own room before I could muster up my own strength, uncurling from the chair and returning to the room to curl up on my plastic mattress with a stiff pillow.

I actually managed to sleep.

It seemed like I had only gotten a few minutes of rest when I was woken by someone yelling in the hall.

“Up up up! Rise and shine, sleeping beauties! It’s goals time!”

I heard a lot of muttering and groaning in response, turning to see a short nurse with blonde hair peek her head in, smiling softly as Thomas sat up and rubbed at his face.

“You’re Marco, right?” she asked me softly, the other nurse still calling for everyone to wake before they laughed with an “Eren, no biting!” 

I just nodded, slowly sitting up.

“Here,” she said softly, stepping into the room as Thomas slipped into the bathroom. She handed me a blue blanket; fleece with simple stitching around the edges. “Bertholdt told me you didn’t get much sleep, and Levi didn’t have any of these at the desk… It’s for you. We usually give them to all of the new patients if they want it.”

I just nodded, eagerly taking the warm fabric and wrapping it around me like a shroud.

“I’m Krista, by the way,” she introduced, straightening up and rubbing out wrinkles in her pink blouse. “I’m one of the psychologists here. I run goals in the morning, and a few group sessions throughout the day. I hope we can get to know each other, okay?”

I nodded, whispering a belated “Thank you” as she turned to leave, picking up a briefcase she had left in the hall. 

Thomas came out of the bathroom, pulling on a pair of moccasins at the foot of his bed. He gestured for me to get up, and I did, and he laughed softly.

“C’mon, newbie. The sooner you get out there, the sooner you’ll adjust.”

I followed the general congregation into a different TV room from last night, this one a bit bigger and having a counter against one wall that was home to a big box of donuts and a coffee machine. Thomas moved to sit on one of the couches, and I looked around at the small gathering of patients to see Bertholdt in his wheelchair and giving me a small smile.

I sat in the closest armchair, curling up in it and successfully hiding in my new blanket as people began to filter in. Krista moved to sit on the floor in the middle of the room, flipping through a clipboard and looking around at the gathered group. Two more came in, a boy with a shaved head and another with a beanie tugged over his ears, and they made a beeline for the donuts and coffee.

I wasn’t very hungry. I didn’t feel very…  _ anything _ . Last night had successfully drained me, and I wanted nothing more than to go home and curl up on my own bed…

Once everyone was seated and I had officially dedicated my eyes to look at the blanket I was holding over my knees, Krista spoke.

“Good morning, everyone! How did you sleep?”

There was a smattering of mumbling, Thomas giving a little smile.

“Better than others,” was all he said.

Krista took attendance quietly, frowning as she sat aside papers with other names on them. She didn’t comment on it, though, announcing that she was happy enough that we showed up at all.

“Alright, so we have a new patient,” Krista said softly, and immediately all eyes were on me. But she tried to pull them away, continuing with speaking. “Let’s go around clockwise and introduce ourselves. Maybe say why you’re here, too, so he knows he has support?”

The boy next to me spoke first, already having drained his coffee and know picking at the styrofoam of the cup, watching it litter the floor.

“My name is Jean Kirchstein, and I tried to kill myself on Friday.”

The pause that followed such a deadpan statement was a bit jarring. My eyes widened, but I didn’t turn to look at him again, just watching little pieces of styrofoam sprinkle onto the floor. But Krista just nodded, smiled, and prompted him.

“Would you like to go into more detail, Jean?”

He had said his name like  _ John _ , but Krista had a nasally  _ Gene  _ that she grimaced a little at. He must have been picky about it. I tried to keep that in mind, to not get on his bad side.

I didn’t want to be on  _ anyone’s  _ bad side here. If they could kill themselves, they could probably kill someone else without a care in the world.

Okay, so I was a little… paranoid. Could you really blame me, though?

“No,” he had deadpanned, empty and destroyed cup now on the floor as he burrowed himself back into his chair. It took me a moment of Krista scratching her pencil on paper to figure out that  _ clockwise _ meant that I was next, and I bit my lip.

“Your turn, sweetie,” she soothed.

“Sorry, I didn’t sleep well…” I moved my blanket around a bit so at least my face was visible, legs straightening to put my sock-clad toes against the commercial carpeting. I felt all eyes on me and absolutely  _ refused _ to meet them, muffling a fake yawn to excuse the reason my eyes were still damp. I focused on the floor instead, speaking so quietly that I wondered if anyone could even hear me.

“I’m Marco Bodt and I, uh, also tried to kill myself,” I mumbled, jaw clenching a bit at how awkward it had sounded. What was I even supposed to say after Jean? He hadn’t given me much of a template to go for.

I didn’t see Krista, too busy boring holes in the floor as my toes curled and uncurled against the carpet.

“That’s okay. Would you like to go into more detail?”

I had to give another fake yawn, feeling the back of my tired eyes prick. Apparently I wasn’t done crying yet.

But if I talked about it… maybe it would help. Maybe I could better come to terms as to what had even  _ happened _ last night.

“Yeah, I guess,” I said lamely, shrugging weakly. “I, uh… took pills.”

I probably could have, and should have, stopped there. That was still a lot of information to tell a room full of strangers. But instead, I found myself looking down at my lap, fingers picking at the fuzz on the underside of the blanket.

I swallowed, and I shared.

“My mom died a couple weeks ago, and I guess I just… snapped. I’ve never felt depressed before or anything like that. I don’t even know why I took all the pills. It felt like I was just… watching myself do it. That probably makes me sound crazy—”

I was cut off by a scoff, wincing at the sharp sound as I looked up to the source, another guy that looked ready to chew his thumb off. “You’re in the fuckin’ looney bin, dude,” he said simply, looking down at his bare toes as they wiggled on the carpet. “We’re all crazy.”

Krista gave a sigh that clearly announced that she had dealt with this before, a strained, small smile on her lips. “You’re not  _ crazy _ -”

The guy chewing his thumb snapped his eyes up to her and looked ready to kill. She fell silent. Jean snorted next to me and I looked to him, wondering if  _ he _ was going to call me crazy too. Wondering if I had already made enemies here.

He jerked his chin over at the guy chewing his thumb, giving me a look that I didn’t fully understand. I just looked back down at my lap.

“Sorry about that,” Krista said softly, flipping through her clipboard to scribble something with her golf pencil. She looked back up at me after to silently encourage me to keep talking, but I was sinking fast under the assumption that I had already made enemies, that I was scared, and that I just wanted to  _ go home _ .

My lip was shaking, sight blurring.

“It’s okay,” I said, unsteady. “You can go to the next person now.”

Jean said, flat and almost a little bitter, “First day’s the worst.”

I pulled up my blanket and tried to hide back into it.

I listened as the small group spoke, trying to remember their names but forgetting them almost instantly. But everyone had hospital bands… I could probably just read those if I got confused. I did remember Armin, though, especially when he said  _ cancer _ and got my undivided attention.

Until I saw the scar on his head. I couldn’t look at it.

The guy after him, the one chewing his thumb… Well. I didn’t learn anything about him.

But I was distracted when I felt something bump my arm, looking over to see Jean offering me a powdered donut. It smelled stale, and I wondered if the powder was just flour and not sugar. But even the  _ sight _ of food made me a little nauseous. “I’m not hungry,” I said softly, trying not to interrupt as the guy with the shaved head, Connie, spoke.

Jean shook his head, persistent. The donut was leaving little bits of powder on my blanket. “They taste like shit, but it beats whatever we’re getting for breakfast,” he whispered, glancing towards the clock. It was almost nine thirty.  “Donuts are better for depression than fake egg fluff.”

It was an offer with good intentions, so I took it. I pulled it under my blanket, wrapped in the napkin Jean had offered with it, whispering a thanks as I zoned out again.

Maybe not  _ everyone _ hated me here. Jean and Thomas seemed pretty friendly.

I continued to listen in silence, but my anxious fear grew when Bertholdt left the room. Left me alone with what were effectively strange, mentally unstable people.

As soon as the door shut, Jean leaned over to speak lowly to me again.

“Bertholdt isn’t really unable to walk.”

I made a small noise, but didn’t turn to him.

I knew that, of course. It was a bad foot injury he had sustained when he was younger; when we had been on the soccer team but too young and shy to have actually  _ properly _ meet. He never told me the details of what happened, but I remembered a kid falling to the ground and crying, ankle twisted at an odd angle and toes swollen so much they looked like grapes.

Why would anyone want to spread rumors about something that bad? Who cared if he needed a wheelchair some days? What did it matter to Jean?

I only half listened to Thomas, frowning when he said that he’ll be leaving soon. But, hey… didn’t that mean I’d have a room to myself?

That thought didn’t cheer me up, though.

Krista moved to pass around little sheets of paper, and I gave a small thank you as Armin handed me a pencil and a sympathetic smile. I looked at the miniature worksheet for a while, trying to think of a goal for myself.

I glanced over to Jean’s, only to see that it was blank.

I swallowed, scribbling on the paper using the armrest of my chair as a table.

_ I want to go home. _

I stared blankly at the numbered spaces, at the directions to list the steps to take. I didn’t know how to get home from here, so I just colored in the little hollow points of the 3 until I heard Krista cry out an “oops!”

I looked over, only to see that Jean had knocked his second coffee to the ground, two styrofoam cups accompanying the small puddle of watered-down coffee.

But with Jean twisted to watch Krista and Connie dab up his mess, I got a peek at his own goals sheet. I saw my  _ name _ on it.

“What does that say?”

Jean startled, clinging the crumpled paper to his chest. “My goals sheet!” he cried. I probably would have laughed at his over dramatic reaction, but my brow furrowed and I reached out to snatch it, reading it with still-watery eyes.

_ Fuck Marco Bodt. _

I felt myself go red, then even beyond that, hand shaking. The room was oddly silent for a moment, Krista finishing with cleaning the mess and sitting back on her knees to look at me curiously.

So much for a friend.

I stood quickly, feeling my donut slip off of my lap and hitting the floor, letting the paper drop as I clung to my blanket. My face was  _ burning _ and I felt the tears building up past the point of breaking, quickly leaving the room before they could break free.

After all that, I figured that I got to add  _ sexual harassment _ to the list of things that were currently stressing me out.

I managed to find Bertholdt, seeing him rolling out of a different room down the opposite hall. He gave me a worried smile, coming to a stop in front of me.

“...You okay?”

I just shook my head. I didn’t really trust my voice at the moment, considering the lump stuck in my throat that held a sob. But Bertholdt knew and he gestured for me to follow him, rolling into his room in the leftmost hall, number four.

It was still dark, one bed made and the other still messy and rumpled. I sat on the bed that was his (he had Reiner’s sweatshirt wrapped around his pillow) and he parked his chair across from me as I curled back into my blanket fort.

“I know you’re scared, Marco… but it’ll be over soon. You’re gonna get help, and once you’re better, they’re gonna let you go home. Tomorrow’s a visiting day, too, so you should probably call your dad…”

I bit my lip, fidgeting. I hadn’t thought about  _ visiting hours _ , about how worried my dad was going to be when I called him and told him I was in the mental ward of Saint Maria’s. I knew he had been through plenty of his own stress lately, but the longer I spent not telling him, the harder it would be. Bertholdt had a point there.

“Breakfast is gonna be soon. I usually eat in here because I get kinda… claustrophobic. You’re welcome to eat with me, though.”

I shook my head at the offer. While it was tempting, I wanted to get the exposure over with. Maybe if I acted outgoing, I would get out faster. “Thanks, but… I’ll be okay.”

We just sat in a mutual silence for a while, as we usually did. Reiner was the one that always got us talking, and considering the circumstances, I don’t think either of us would have been very chatty in the first place.

A nurse ducked their head in, the same brunette I had seen earlier. “Breakfast! Marco, you gonna eat with us?”

Nervous, I nodded.

Wordlessly, they looked to Bertholdt.

“Um… No thanks, Hange.”

Hange shrugged, gesturing for me to get up before they walked off, and I heard them yell a “Ready, boys?” before I figured I had gathered enough courage and slipped out in my socks.

I got there a little late, standing in a line as an elderly woman grabbed a tray and filled it with eggs that looked  _ too _ yellow, a stale biscuit, and what I assumed to be sausage. I just gave a weak smile, grabbing a juice box before heading over to an empty table to sit by myself.

I wasn’t hungry.

I poked at the food I was given with the plastic spoon I had grabbed, wondering if there were forks and knives somewhere or if I just got a defective little baggy of a spoon that didn’t have the rest…

So I just… gave up.

I pushed my tray away, folding my arms on the table and burrowing my face into them, smelling the bleach used to clean the plastic table. It gave me a headache, but that was okay, because at least I felt  _ something _ .

The table shifted, though, and I lifted my head to see Hange smiling softly, picking at one of those single-serve bowls of dry cereal with their fingers. Wordlessly, they offered me some, but I shook my head.

They shrugged lightly. “It’s alright. You’ll get your appetite back. The first day’s the worst.”

I frowned, sitting up a little straighter, still holding my blanket around my shoulders. “...That’s what everyone keeps saying.”

“Because it’s true,” they emphasized, pointing at me with a Cheerio before popping it into their mouth. “I’ve seen people that look like ghosts their first day, and they leave here smiling and looking  _ alive _ . It can only get better, right?”

They had a point, but I just sighed, bundling my blanket tighter around myself. I blinked rapidly, watching them eat in silence as my eyesight teared up again.

“...I just wanna go home,” I said wetly.

Hange opened their mouth to speak, but something crashed to the floor behind me. Startled, I turned to look, seeing Connie red-faced as he flailed on his fallen chair, the thumb-biter laughing so hard that I wondered if he was going to hyperventilate.

Hange stood up, though relaxed once they saw no one was really hurt. They stepped over to help Connie up, his hands swatting at them in embarrassment. They scolded the table as a whole before snatching a broken spoon from Jean, heaving a sigh as they sat down beside me.

“Boys,” they chuckled, nudging me as if I was supposed to laugh.

I just smiled weakly, pulling my tray over and nibbling quietly at my eggs, knowing I had to eat  _ something _ …

I pretended to ignore the things Jean shouted about  _ fucking _ , shoving my tray away again. Hange frowned, but looked to the clock before turning to call to the others.

“Alright, gentlemen, five more minutes before we gotta clear out!”

They stood up, giving a firm pat between my shoulders as they did so. “I know the food is delicious, but try not to savor it for so long.”

I stayed seated as everyone filed out, leaving only when Hange nudged my arm. I dumped my tray free of uneaten food, stepping back out to the halls and not really knowing what to do with myself. I peeked into Bertholdt’s room, but he was lying down and looked asleep, so I just waffled awkwardly with my blanket for a moment.

Krista came up to me before I could get too panicked, smiling so warmly that my toes stopped freezing as badly.

“If you want to call your parents, you can,” she said softly, gently taking my elbow to guide me to a phone bolted to the wall. There were more than one, and someone in a hoodie that looked half dead was slurring into one of them.

I just gave her a nod, stepping over to the phone and listening to the dial tone with numb ears.

I had my dad’s number memorized. He switched our old house number over to his cell phone when he got it, and I had been told when I was little to always tell someone that number if I needed help.

It rang once. Twice. I wondered if he wouldn’t pick up because it was an unfamiliar number…

But he did, halfway through the third ring.

“Hello?”

He sounded a little confused, likely wondering why a number with the area code of Saint Maria’s was calling him after his wife already died.

I couldn’t find my voice.

“Hello?” he asked again, more impatient.

“H-Hi, dad,” I croaked, wincing at the way my voice broke and strained. “...’s me. Marco.”

There was a pause on the line, but when my dad spoke again, he sounded nothing short of concerned.

“Marco? Marco, what’s wrong? Where are you?”

So Reiner hadn’t told him.

I clenched my jaw and squeezed my eyes shut, ignoring the man next to me that was getting into a sleepy argument over someone taking his drug stash.

“I…” I inhaled, just deciding to  _ tell him _ . “I’m at Saint Maria’s… n-not the cancer ward, I… I’m in the mental ward, dad. Reiner brought me here last night because I…”

I choked, but my dad’s line was nothing but stunned silence. I flinched at the feedback from my breath.

“I tried to kill myself, dad… I’m scared.”

There was a broken noise on the other end of the phone, and my dad sounded on the verge of tears.

“Marco,” he breathed, the sound strained. “Marco… Are you okay?”

All things considered… I guess I was. I was alive, at least. “Just… scared.”

“It’s gonna be okay, Marco. Is there a nurse I can talk to? I wanna come see you… I need to see you.”

I nodded and whispered a small “okay” before I caught Krista’s eye, waving her over. She smiled and came over, taking the phone from me and putting her hand over the mouthpiece.

“Dr. Jaeger is going to be your psychiatrist, okay? He’s with Jean right now, but it’s your turn after. He’s in the last room on the right, okay?”

I nodded, dabbed my tears with my blanket, and decided that I had to get on with the cursed First Day.


End file.
